Birds on the Rogue.

This morning after I finished up knitting for the morning and Bob was done with the Sunday paper we decided to take a walk on the White Pines Trail along the Rogue River with the dogs.

We are having a lovely spring weekend here with temperatures in the 40's and 50's and this trail is just a nice dog walk when not overrun by traffic which it wasn't today or yesterday.

When I got home yesterday afternoon I ran the boys up and we walked a few miles. We saw a lot of birds, and Sullivan found himself a salamander! I was shocked and didn't manage to bring a camera (of course) since I was handling dogs on my own. However, today the Guy came with so he walked the boys while I brought up the rear with a camera and the old girl. And of course, many of the critters we saw yesterday proved hard to find today.

That's just the way it is it seems. We did catch a glimpse of a black squirrel (I looked it up when we go theme, they do exist. The are a mellinistic morph of a gray squirrel), but he was too quick and I didn't catch a shot of him. This fox squirrel however was an easy shot. He had frozen on a branch to let us pass by and was a perfect model.

The waterfowl as always were wonderful, including some additions to the river near Rockford. These two swans seem to be making a home of it here. 

They are even chasing off the geese as you can see in this shot. They seem to be stealing the whole island though the geese claimed it last week when they started pairing off into couples.

There's always a bully in the bunch, no?

Bob when to Lansing yesterday and said there were a couple of Cranes beside the highway.  I'm excited to get on the river this year with a kayak and see what all we can see. I'm hoping of lots of turtles and snakes to add to the pictures too.

While we were walking we heard and saw one of my favorites. Yes, more blackbirds. This guy I caught here puffing up as he was calling. His wing markings were quite bright and eye catching.

On our way back I kept hearing something that made me think of the Redwings, but was different somehow. I thought I saw one but when I tried to get a picture it flew off and I thought it wasn't a redwing at all. Later just as we were getting back to town I confirmed my suspicions.

I don't know what they are, but I will find out, but they are definitely not red winged black birds. They make me think of the Grackles you see in Casper, but I don't recall them singing like this and the blue and greens iridescence are too deep.

We also had a fly by from one of my other favorite birds and I snapped off a couple of quick shots despite looking up into the sun.

I thought a couple of them were kind of neat regardless.

Especially with that sun coming through those feathers.

And of course we had the mallards. This guy must have just cleaned himself up because he was brilliant in the sun.

He was obviously a bit nervous as he was on his own. As soon as he spotted us he turned and swam off the other way. I'm thinking something happened to this guy's mate since a fine drake like this should be around at least one hen.

Crossing a footbridge, this lovely goose was sitting in the sun. I knew I had a nice picture with all the feather detail as soon as I snapped it. I think this is my favorite picture of the day. I like it so much I'm going to put the full size pic at the bottom of this post.

These last ones are just a couple of other shots from the trail.

Now, too the real substance of todays post.

The box of socks is done and gone and I'm taking a break from socks for a bit with a little side project that I'm designing.

I've tore it out a few times in the last several days but I think I'm on the right track at the moment.

And this last week at work I had to help Sally with a spinning Louet Victoria spinning wheel for a customer and guess what... The spinning bug bit me again. So yesterday for knit day I took the wheel and finally wrapped up the Coral Charm yarn that has been on the wheel since January. 

Now the two singles just need to rest for a bit before I jump in and ply them.

As for everything else in life, work seems to be going well for both of us. We close on the house this week and will get to move in the end of next month (the sellers have to buy a place and we're being nice). So soon. Very soon, the kids will have a yard to play in again. We won't have a child who only knows how to run across a room, or cry instead of speak in the apartment above us.

Michigan U-Turns are kind of frustrating and I still don't see the logic in them, but they aren't to be feared as I was doing when I was first told about them. Mind you I found out about them the day before we got here and was driving a 20' UHaul and towing my car. Michigna doesn't believe in posting speed limits well on the roads so all drivers know what they should be doing, but other than that, drivers here aren't any worse than anywhere else. There are still little ancient people who like to go 20 less than the rarely posted limit and all ages paying more attention to their phone than their surroundings.

Okay, I'm off to be productive again! Bye.